I received a reply from Microsoft to my original question (below) but cannot reply to it, they sent me a link to reset my password which puts me straight back into the same circle of issues

"A few days back my 13 year old son had problems logging into his xbox live account on his xbox 360. We have tried logging onto his account *** Email address is removed for privacy *** using a PC and eventually asked for a password reset. We received the link but it results in a temporary service error. We have tried this on a different PC and cleared the cache but it's still not working after several attemps. We also filled in online recovery request form and this sent a link which again did not work. The password reset will work with another email address"